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New Scientist Live

Date glitch delays Cygnus’s rendezvous with ISS

By Jacob Aron

EVEN turning it off and on again won’t work this time. A software glitch has delayed Cygnus’s arrival at the International Space Station. The uncrewed supply vehicle was due to become the second-ever private craft to dock with the ISS on 22 September, but its creators, Orbital Sciences, had to hold off after receiving GPS data from the station in the wrong format. Cygnus is using an older GPS format that is not compatible with a location system aboard the ISS.

Cygnus had reached an altitude 4 kilometres below the station after successfully completing the first stages of its mission, but will now have to wait until its orbit realigns with the ISS to try again.

Orbital Sciences, based in Dulles, Virginia, has developed a software patch to fix the problem and tested it on a ground-based simulator. The company will now upload the patch and test it in orbit before attempting to approach the ISS again. Orbital had hoped to retry on 24 September, but the arrival of a trio of astronauts in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft the next day meant the schedule was too tight.

“It’s more of an embarrassing hiccup rather than any serious showstopper,” says Greg Sadlier, space analyst at consultancy firm London Economics. “It seems to be something that should have been predictable, but serves to underline the purpose of testing and demonstration flights.”

This article appeared in print under the headline “Cygnus glitch isn’t rocket science”